5 Best SMPlayer Alternatives

David Brooks 12/06/2019

Blu-ray Player

4,814 views

When thinking about changing to another media player instead of SMPlayer, there could be multiple reasons and every person is holding distinct views about SMPlayer. But under most circumstances, people find that the SMPlayer alternatives have less trouble while running steadily on Windows operating system. Some of the best SMplayer alternatives is also capable of supporting various video formats on the Mac operating system smoothly. Hence, this article will save you precious time and provide you with the best 5 alternatives to SMPlayer, on Windows and Mac operating system respectively.

Part 1: About SMPlayer

Something people want to figure out is that what makes SMPlayer users change their minds and obtain another media player. So the first step should be getting familiar with the SMPlayer. We will give you both sides to view the SMPlayer for a better understanding.

On one hand, this popular program can hold lots of benefits. SMPlayer is considered popular among media players because of its renowned, graphical front-end. What the graphical front-end does is to provide the SMPlayer with the special GUI widgets. The GUI stands for Graphic User Interface, which offered by the Qt company. SMPlayer is open-source and free for multiple platforms. It supports playing video contents at different speeds and users can set a single step forward and backward. With the ability to remember settings, it can automatically keep playing every file from any time you pause. If you need extra subtitles, SMPlayer allows you to fetch online via the network connection. After downloading those subtitles, you can adjust them by changing their font, size, and color. At the same time, you can see the SMPlayer media users are all over the world since the language support can be up to over 30 countries.

On the other hand, however, there are also drawbacks on the basis of the feedback from users. Even though the SMPlayer is acclaimed to support all the media formats including audio and video, such as AVI, MP4, MKV, MPEG, MOV, DivX, h.264, some users find it is not available for many media formats like HEVC, 3GP, WTV, etc. At the critical point, people are in urgent needs of another free HEVC player. Being bothered by the rising irregular file formats, the surging trend is to find out how to open a WTV file. And if you are a mobile device user, you will also have the desire to know what is 3GP and what can you do with the 3GP files. For more format options, the requirements can be achieved by the best SMplayer alternatives we picked.

Besides, the fact that the SMPlayer cannot support the Blu-ray playback pushes most users with Blu-ray discs into a dark place. If you have DVD discs, you could be a little bit lucky. Another aspect that disappoints users is that the SMPlayer can be only available for encrypted DVD discs. In other words, if you have bought some DVD discs with other region code, then they are not going to show up on the playlist. However, the ISO files are not on the offer list by SMplayer neither. Furthermore, its built-in codecs seem not perfect for displaying the original image quality as it should be. In this way, movie fans can no doubt move to the top alternatives to SMPlayer.

Part 2: Top 5 SMplayer Alternatives for Windows

1. Leawo Blu-ray Player

This top best alternative can excellently play DVD disc, Blu-ray discs, and ISO files without paying any fee. Leawo Blu-ray Player covers all the popular video and audio formats as you can imagine, including the difficulties with HEVC, 3GP, and WTV files. If you keen to explore more of weird media video formats from all over the world, you can absolutely travel with this tool with great performance. No matter where the media source comes from, the format library contains over 180 formats for both input and output. In addition, with this region free Blu-ray player, you are able to directly open all the DVD discs regardless of the region code. Its features also include the capability to display the most detailed images. Simultaneously, this program has all the functions of SMPlayer, such as customizable skins and themes, full control during playback, stereo sound, and multilingual interface environment. Extra functions like snap screenshots and power manager will illustrate such its modern technology characteristic. It soon became one of the most practical applications.

Free Blu-ray Player

– Region-free Blu-ray player software to play Blu-ray disc and DVD disc for free, regardless of disc protection and region restriction.
– Play 4K FLV videos, 4K MKV videos, 4K MP4 videos, etc. without quality loss.
– Play 1080P videos, 720P videos with lossless quality.

2. MPC-HC

The MPC-HC is the second alternative to SMPlayer with a simple interface. While it is also an open source media player, it comprises the more powerful codecs for LPCM, MP2, MPEG-2 video, and DTS. Although there are plenty of media players out there, this free utility is provided with features of a larger amount of format options than SMPlayer. And other features are similar to the SMPlayer yet with a simple and neat interface that is welcomed by widespread users.

3. Daum PotPlayer

If you are still looking for an awesome media player that can reach the maximum performance by using just a tiny bit of resource, this Daum PotPlayer is certainly the best SMplayer alternative for you. This unique technology focuses on DXVA, CUDA, and QuickSync, which is called enhanced H/W-acceleration. Since the SMPlayer doesn't have the ability to deliver the 3D effect, you can enjoy the real 3D just with a pair of 3D glasses. It has built in several setup options which make it easy to select options like File Associations, Visualizations, Shortcuts, and Subtitle Formats.

4. Media Player Classic - Black Edition

Even with the old-fashioned interface, the Media Player Classic is assuredly a classical application that never gets old. What keeps this alternative to SMPlayer young is the secret of a big load of additional features above MPC-HC. The main one is the Seekbar Previews, which the SMPlayer has not developed. Being able to support playback of VCDs and SVCDs, this MPC can be turned into a portable application with an inputted INI file.

5. VLC

Needless to say, the VLC Media Player can never get a chance to leave any list for the best media players. Besides being as a free open source cross-platform SMPlayer alternative, it provides the most reliable decoding technology. Playing DVDs can be easily done even with ISO files with this powerful tool.

Part 3: Top 5 SMPlayer Alternatives for Mac

1. 5KPlayer

Since there is no version of SMPlayer on Mac, this best SMplayer alternative can be like the twin of SMPlayer. However, this one can do much more than SMPlayer could. You can use this application to download YouTube videos. The subtitle can be added any time online. The prominent feature that exceeds SMPlayer is AirPlay streaming. As not too many media players are competent to the AirPlay mirroring with the robust technology. Other features such as video rendering and audio image processing are supplied.

2. Potplayer

On the Mac system, this Potplayer has the same function as the version of Windows. Apart from the similarity to SMplayer, such as marking the playback viewing points and YouTube playlist analyzing, what this SMPlayer alternative is better at are the Direct3D9 Ex Flip Mode and Overlay support. Meanwhile, you can select the sound card when you have more than one.

3. UMPlayer

The great feature of UMPlayer is not only due to the format library, which involves output drivers like X11, Xv, DGA, OpenGL, SVGAlib, AAlib, DirectFB and so on. It also acts like a movie player with rare codecs such as XAnim and Win32 DLL codecs. That allows you to enjoy DVD video contents in full screen. The company designed a handy widget to inform users about its status information, as it is named as the onscreen display (OSD). Juveniles can also enjoy some particular subtitles in Korean since Korean drama series are popular among youngsters and this player can be the top choice.

4. Bino

Bino shows on the list is for the reason that it is adequate to carry out the stereoscopic 3D video. With buttress of a wide variety of both input and output formats, the multi-projector setups will amaze users by the smooth performance. In the case that you like high precision color, this can be settled within the input and output settings in this Bino alternative to SMPlayer.

5. QtAV

Last but not least, QtAV can also be a good alternative to SMPlayer because of the strong library based on Qt and FFmpeg. It is qualified to decode hardware like DXVA2, VAAPI, VDA/VideoToolbox, CedarX, and CUDA. Its features embrace the OpenGL and ES2 support for almost all formats including Hi10P videos, while the SMPlayer and Mplayer really can't support.

Part 4: Conclusion

The clock is ticking when you have troubles dealing with some video formats that the SMPlayer cannot open. Especially, if you have a passion for movies and enjoying uninterrupted theater experience at home, the best alternatives to SMPlayer is Leawo Blu-ray Player that ensures you to approach what you are longing for. Don't wander around when you do have a massive box of DVDs and Blu-rays, get the best SMPlayer alternative - Leawo Blu-ray Player for every Windows user.